Graham Butcher

Agreed, if you are in the recovery business, then you should have at least 2 of those skates if not 4, on board, especially as they also remove the need to locate the actual jacking point on a car, plus some cars should be placed into jack mode before jacking to avoid suspension damage.

@Evolution13 the reason I showed that is because there as many 30 year old in use and those over 40 years as there are electric. Those are old cars, I serisouly doubt that we will be seeing any electric cars last that long the battery and electronics will have died well before then. I have remote controls about 10 years old that have had their batteries removed and put in storage as the item they were for was also not used, that died while in storage even. I wonder why couldn't jack the Jag up and pop skates under each wheel to recover it? I have seen that done before on big ICE limousines before and even moved sidewards on them?

Interesting car and is a genuine step forward with that range, just like the Gen 2 Porsche Taycan, but once again these cars are missing the point when it comes to the driver interface. The digital tech the car has at your fingertips on the central screen is ideal when you're parked up, but to have all of that going on while driving is a major distraction in my view. It would be a real contender in so many ways if the controls were reverted back to switches, buttons and rotary controls, all of which can be operated without having to look at them or navigate through menus, etc. It is, is it not deemed dangerous and carries a hefty fine and penalty points to even hold a mobile phone, let alone use it and yet somehow it seems OK to do complicated controls for various functions on the car via a touch screen. Utter looniness and this is not just because it is an EV, all modern cars, even my Kodiaq, have some controls via the screen. How long will it be before the DFT decide to ban the operation of controls, thus controlled? Aren't they already considering steps against the interacting with a satnav while driving?

Those "quite old" electrified vehicles, as you put it, are still comparably young when compared against some of the old ICE cars still in daily use, plus of course all the heritage and classic cars which may only come out for 6 months a year to attend the many classic car rallies and summertime fun drives. These cars carry signifcantly higher fire risks than cars from the 2000s, as the fuel lines etc. are all aged, and parts have aged and deteriorated far more than those on more modern cars, and also considering that the older cars are far more likely to be using homemade parts for some components, as manufacturers only have an obligation to make parts available for 10 years. Consider this.

This is part of the problem, the fire brigades have not been keeping accurate records of precisely what type of car fires that they have been called to, and this is a worldwide problem, as that fireman on StacheD Training mentioned in one of his videos that I linked to sometime ago. He also mentioned that the fire statistic chart that has been heralded by most of the EV clan as proof that electric cars do not catch fire as often as ICE cars. This selfsame chart has been used as proof of that claim since 2018, that makes those figures 7 years out of date.

That's what I said, 39% for all battery fires, as you discovered they don't breakdown the figures. But 39% is i large increase, if that was BEV sales you all would be trumpting it as proof that electric was the future, when in reality sales are around half that percentage figure. If there were 39% increase in ICE fires you all would shouting it from the roof tops, again claiming electric cars are far less likely to catch fire. You have to be fair, the fires are Lithium related and not oil. The only real difference between electric cars and scooters / bikes is one of scale!

Correct, time will indeed reveal everything, it always did. It saw the rise and decline of the first round of BEVs and also steam driven lorries, and the rise to promeince of the diesel being heralded as the fuel of choice against petrol and then it's fall from the spotlight. We will see what the next few years bring. London fire brigade are getting worried having seen a 39% increase in the number battery fires this year, suggesting as they age, more fires are likely?

This is an interesting statistic I found just now on the web. The ration for petrol/diesel fires does not surprise me, seeing as there are many magnitudes more of them, but the real surprise here is the sheer number of hybrid fires, which have not been around nearly as long as pure ICE cars have, and if the BEV figures are extrapolated, then judging by the hybrids, we could be in for some entertaining times as the BEVs age increases.

None confirmed ones, many reports of car/vehicle fires on local radio and highways dept have reported many on M25 and M11 but not stated what they were so no point posting about them.

Yeah, I was assuming that the person doing the calling would be in most cases the driver who should know what kind of car it was. That said, though I watched a video from the USA where Tesla had pulled up at a gas pump and the battery started off gassing big time and the local police happened to be there. Their quick thinking saved a massive fire as they pushed it with 2 police cruisers away from the pumps. Good job they were there, could have been nasty.

@Evolution13 much the same happens with the fire brigades, they often claim that they weren't told that the car on fire was an EV. That info is important to pass on to fire crews, breakdown services etc.

What! I thought Scotland was more efficient in most things when compared to England, looks not to be the case after all. Most vans i would have thought would not be covered by RAC or AA, and operated by businesses and more likely to use tyre centres as time is money lost to them if they have to get recovered for a puncture and then possibly retrace their steps again.

Tyre companies do punctures at the roadside in England so I'm pretty sure Scotland does as well. If an EV runs out of charge then a mobile charger comes and tops it enough to reach a fixed charger. So it seems reasonable to suggest that if they are put on recovery truck, that it is highly probable that the problems are more severe and need workshop assistance?

If the new battery is the same as the old one then the system should be OK. Maybe the system also takes the age of the battery into its charging routine, so maybe if you wanted to code it, just change the last 2 digits of the battery number and leave the others alone. That way the system will now know the battery is new?

If the battery is of the same type, eg., EFB or AGM as the old one and the same capacity and cold cranking amps, then there is no need to recode it.

Yeah, it could be that; it's poor design, as you should never get down to zero and push on beyond; it damages battery health, as lithium batteries can become completely dead if they are allowed to go beyond a certain point and will no longer accept a charge. My filthy diesel car, which is belching out CO, CO₂, NOX and carcinogens 😴 will actually alert me to refuel when I have 60 miles left, and there is still a safety buffer left in the tank when zero has been reached. The sensible person will refuel then if they cannot comfortably get back to a cheaper source of fuel without reaching zero, even if it is only a few litres if the fuel is more expensive than it is in their home location. I wish people would stop banging on about ICE vehicles belching out CO, CO₂, NOX and carcinogens when in truth those have always been there and actually have been reduced by around 90%. Nobody ever mentioned that until certain councils saw it as a way of plugging the gap made by government cuts to local authorities by setting up low emission zones in many locations, and as I have repeatedly posted info and links that clearly show that the air quality is not as bad as the authorities claim, with historical data going back years showing the drop in levels. Let's be absolutely clear on this: it's all about revenue generation. If they could not see a way to make money from it, then they would not even mention it. BEVs are being pushed as a way of reducing CO₂ and thus slowing down the alleged global warming and are part of the net zero drive. When governments actually stop cutting down vital rainforests to build a venue and access roads to COP meeting venues and creating massive amounts CO₂ etc. by flying thousands of people in private jets to and from these meetings, and do so many times during the meeting, maybe others might take it more seriously. They pass laws that they expect us to adhere to, but they do nothing to restrict their footprint. As discussed before, they ban the charging of BEVs on their premises in Westminster but are quite happy for everyone else to run that risk.

Likewise, over the last 3 days I have seen 3 cars that just died in the middle of a city road causing traffic jams, all of them were being recharged from mobile recovery vans of various motor rescue services and Tuesday I saw one of the 55 new electric buses made by Yutong broken down, halfway out of bus stop layby causing mayhem on the main to the A&E dept and today there was a Yutong double-decker outside Tescos with all the passengers standing around in the freezing cold awaiting a replacement bus to arrive. Given that these buses only went into service on 29th Sept, it does not look very promising for the future. I also noticed the other day when I saw one at night that the interior lighting is all green?

There will always be risk takers and there will always be those that abide by the rules, and, as we all know only too well, insurance companies will look for any excuse not to honour their part of the deal. So it just conceivable that those who refuse to work on EV's do so with the knowledge of the advice that Thatcham have given to insurance companies and simply not prepared to risk everything, knowing that should the worst happen it would wipe them out all together?

There are training centres dotted all over the place, but this is coming way too late in the day. There are owners who have not had the use of their cars because they cannot find anyone willing to work on them, or they are still awaiting for the dealers to receive the required parts; even after some months, they are still waiting. Many have to pay for the training; many have openly told me personally that they want no part of the EV thing. They say that training will cost them personally, or that their employer will lose out in profits while their staff are away on training courses and some garage owners are not willing to take a chance on anything to do with EV cars because of the requirements placed upon them by Thatcham and insurance companies for storage, particularly if the cars have been in an accident or received some kind of damage to the battery compartment. They require that car is kept at least 15 metres away from anything else while waiting to be worked on, this means that where 100 ICE cars could be stored, only 6 electrics could be stored, thus pushing up their overheads and at the time massively reducing their turnover. To not follow that requirement could render them extremely vulnerable if one did suffer a battery fire and take out with numerous others. Here is the result of a quick Google search for EV training courses and the cost of this one is a minimum of £2,500 per person. EV Mechanic Training Centre – London Electric Centre

@classic I watched that OGS video, and what an eye-opener that was. There could have been a really nasty outcome to that, but it also shows that electric cars are not really that maintenance-free. They just swap the oil filter, change etc. for other forms of maintenance, and if that is not carried out according to the manufacturers' instructions and approval, it can be so costly. Without the owner finding a secondhand electric motor, that whole repair could easily have been at least £7,000 plus, which is not really acceptable for a car with just 43,000 miles on the clock. Like I've always said, they just swap one set of complications for another set, but the real difference here is that we have over a century of experience and knowledge of how to repair and design ICE systems, electric is just beginning for the second time in history. We currently do not anywhere enough engineers to take on electric repairs.

Oh dear, oh dear, @Evolution13 , @lol-lol & @classic I'm afraid that you still don't get it, it's not me, but you EV owners! Just how are you ever going to get it and learn something if you steadfastly refuse to watch those videos that I mentioned, even with my clever "clickbait" for you? None of the 3 are actually anti-EV; they are against the forced adoption of them worldwide, especially when there are still so many great issues with them, many of which you do not believe are issues. I do not doubt for a single second that many of them can and will be resolved in the fullness of time, but let's get the biggest issues resolved before even thinking about making them mandatory. As for ICE poisoning our air in real time, so are many other things: gas heating, bonfires, volcanoes, wildfires, every fire, deforestation on a massive scale, shipping massive amounts of stuff around the world, flying, taking holidays abroad, going on cruises and nuclear energy, which is building up a massive amount of problems for future generations with all the radiation waste, as is the so-called renewable solar and wind generation, as it is claimed currently they are not recyclable and are being buried in landfill. Well, if none of you are willing to actually watch and enjoy the humour that is present in the videos of their road trip, I'm going to have to tell you. The MacMaster completed the whole thing without having to charge his Taycan and even had enough range left to make the trip back to Mansfield. Not only that, but he actually came first in the Gen 2 Taycan, a real sign of how fast the development has been for Porsche on the road to electrification. A real-world range on this trip of 450miles, now that is PROGRESS.

There you go again, assuming. Well, you both could not be further from the truth if you tried. Firstly, it is NOT an EV bashing exercise, and in fact, it has NEVER been; they, like so many others, are against the removal of people's freedom of choice. GEEZ😒. In the case of the (your words) Cornish halfwit, he is not driving his own car, he is delivering a customers car who has certain expectations of when that car will be delivered. Not everyone is prepared to travel miles away to collect their own car, so he is naturally going to select the most obvious choice of route, that which should be the fastest possible route between A and B, then he can get to his next delivery quicker and earn more as a result. Again, not a difficult concept to grasp. If you want to drive an EV, then you should be free to do so; likewise, if you want petrol or diesel, then again, you should be free to do so. Just like the Betamax and VHS battles, the buying public decided that VHS suited their needs better than Betamax. Think about it sensibly; it is as simple as this: your choice of colour for your walls and woodwork in your house is up to you, and you can have any colour that you like, even down to having paint specially mixed to match the fur colour of your pet cat or dog, for example. Then the WEF, etc., decree that all walls and woodwork are to be purple, and once existing stocks of other colours are gone, that's it; you will have no further choice but purple. Would you be happy with that?

Have you even watched those videos? Would I be correct in assuming you haven't? It looks to me that you have assumed that those videos are all about EV bashing 😞, which they are not. I'm watching this OGS video right now, but this is basically mechanical work, the real problem with EV's is the battery and the whole electrical control systems where the real shortage of skills is.

I'd recommend something more powerful than that; it will just about crawl along with Windows 11 and will struggle to run some basic games and videos. I have a HP Elitbook 8540P laptop (desktop replacement) i7 cpu running Windows 10 and it struggles at times to run some videos, whereas my desktop Windows 11 machine will happily play blu-ray 4K HD videos. That said, 3 months ago I treated myself to a brand new Lenovo Ideapad slim i7 2025 model with the latest version of i7 family, 16GB ram and 1TB SSD and it too struggles with some items that the desktop AMD Win 11 flies through.

That's a good idea with the Linux; it is worthy of a separate topic, one which I'm very interested in. I have a second desktop which I have installed a copy of Lime but not done much else with, as I'm finding it a bit heavy going, to be honest. I have only just got Thunderbird running for emails, but although, it dragged over all my emails from Windows Edge, it did not do my contacts or the calendar. 😒. So I'd for one, would welcome some guidance on Linux and how to do things on it and on how to source software to run on it, I have LibreOffice, and that's it. I have decades of Windows experience. But Linux seems to defy logic to me.